And at a very early age he had decided that he would chuck the country-gentleman business. He didn’t see that he was the one to bother with those confounded, hardheaded beggars or with those confounded windswept moors and wet valley bottoms. One owed the blighters a duty, but one did not have to live among them or see that they aired their bedrooms. It had been mostly swank that, always; since the Corn Laws, it had been almost entirely swank. Still, it is obvious that a landlord owes something to the estate from which he and his fathers have drawn their incomes for generations and generations.
Well, he had never intended to do it, because he had been born tired of it. He liked racing and talking about racing to fellows who liked racing. He had intended to do that to the end.
He hadn’t been able to.
He had intended to go on living between the Office, his chambers, Marie Léonie’s and weekends with racehorse owners of good family until his eyes closed. … Of course God disposes in the end, even of the Tietjenses of Groby! He had intended to give over Groby, on the death of his father, to whichever of his brothers had heirs and seemed likely to run the estate well. That would have been quite satisfactory. Ted, his next brother, had had his head screwed on all right. If he had had children he would have filled the bill. So would the next brother. … But neither of them had had children and both had managed to get killed in Gallipoli. Even sister Mary, who was actually next to him and a maîtresse femme if ever there was one, had managed to get killed as a Red Cross matron. She would have run Groby well enough—the great, blowsy, grey woman with a bit of a moustache.
Thus God had let him down with a bump on Christopher. … Well, Christopher would have run Groby well enough. But he wouldn’t. Wouldn’t own a yard of Groby land; wouldn’t touch a penny of Groby money. He was suffering for it now.
They were both, in effect, suffering, for Mark could not see what was to become of either Christopher or the estate.
Until his father’s death Mark had bothered precious little about the fellow. He was by fourteen years the younger: there had been ten children altogether, three of his own mother’s children having died young and one having been soft. So Christopher had been still a baby when Mark had left Groby for good—for good except for visits when he had brought his umbrella and seen Christopher mooning at the schoolroom door or in his own mother’s sitting-room. So he had hardly seen the boy.
And at Christopher’s wedding he had definitely decided that he would not see him again—a mug who had got trepanned into marrying a whore. He wished his brother no ill, but the thought of him made Mark sickish. And then, for years, he had heard the worst possible rumours about Christopher. In a way they had rather consoled Mark. God knows, he cared little enough about the Tietjens family—particularly for the children by that soft saint. But he would rather have any brother of his be a wrong un than a mug.
Then gradually, from the gossip that went abroad, he had come to think that Christopher was a very bad wrong un indeed. He could account for it easily enough. Christopher had a soft streak, and what a woman can do to deteriorate a fellow with a soft streak is beyond belief. And the woman Christopher had got hold of—who had got hold of him—passed belief too. Mark did not hold any great opinion of women at all; if they were a little plump, healthy, a little loyal and not noticeable in their dress that was enough for him. … But Sylvia was as thin as an eel, as full of vice as a mare that’s a wrong un, completely disloyal and dressed like any Paris cocotte. Christopher, as he saw it, had had to keep that harlot to the tune of six or seven thousand a year, in a society of all wrong uns too—and on an income of at most two. … Plenty for a younger son. But naturally he had had to go wrong to get the money.
So it had seemed to him … and it had seemed to matter precious little. He gave a thought to his brother perhaps twice a year. But then one day—just after the two brothers had been killed—their father had come up from Groby to say to Mark at the Club:
“Has it occurred to you that, since those two boys are killed, that fellow Christopher is practically heir to Groby? You have no legitimate children, have you?” Mark replied that he hadn’t any bastards either, and that he was certainly not going to marry.
At that date it had seemed to him certain that he was not going to marry Papist Marie Léonie Riotor, and certainly he was not going to marry anyone else. So Christopher—or at any rate Christopher’s heir—must surely come in to Groby. It had not really, hitherto, occurred to him. But when it was thus put forcibly into his mind he saw instantly that it upset the whole scheme of his life. As he saw Christopher then, the fellow was the last person in the world to have the charge of Groby—for you had to regard that as to some extent a cure of souls. And he, himself, would not be much better. He was hopelessly out of touch with the estate, and, even though his father’s land-steward was a quite efficient fellow, he himself at that date was so hopelessly immersed in the affairs of the then-war that he would hardly have a moment of time to learn anything about the property.
There was, therefore, a breakdown in his scheme of life. That was already a
